Indra presents to NATO countries and allied armies the first next-generation mission system for military vehicles in Europe

This week, Indra has showcased its new Maestre mission system at one of the most important international forums for armored vehicles in the world, namely the 25th International Armoured Vehicles (IAV) Conference, held in the United Kingdom and attended by commanders of the main allied armies of NATO and other countries. Indra’s Maestre system has been designed to serve as the backbone and brain of armored vehicles and has become the first next-generation solution in Europe to go into serial production for operational deployment.

The European defence industry has been working on the development of systems such as this one, which meet the demanding architectural requirements defined by NATO (STANAG 4754, etc.). This open and scalable inter-operable solution allows controlling, in a simple and intuitive way, the growing quantity of systems and sensors carried by modern armored vehicles.

Indra designed the Maestre system for the Spanish Army's 8x8 Dragon vehicle, which is currently in the production phase, and has already integrated it into the first units that have been manufactured, with the main objective of facilitating operations. In particular, the identification of alerts and threats through the use of Artificial Intelligence and advanced 360º artificial vision models, operations management, targeting and firing on targets and driving the vehicle. All this with the aim of increasing mission survivability and effectiveness.

Indra’s system has thus become the first of its generation in Europe to reach this level of maturity and begin mass production with a view to their use in real deployments. Its implementation also constitutes a turning point in the development of the military vehicles of the future, whose progress depends on the evolution of this technology. Mission systems are key to securing the degree of interoperability required to carry out multi-domain operations in which multiple platforms and systems are coordinated to act simultaneously in different land, air, cyberspace and, in some cases, marine domains. First and foremost, the foregoing requires much smarter and more inter-connected vehicles equipped with systems such as Maestre, which allow data to be exchanged at huge speed via a combat cloud.

Ignacio Ruiz, Indra’s deputy director of Land Systems, was tasked with presenting the Maestre system at the forum held at the Farnborough International Exhibition Centre. He stated that “Indra is one of the main players in the armored vehicle systems market in Europe and it’s evolving towards a role as a top-level integrator, after acquiring a majority stake in the Tess Defence military vehicle integration company. It also plays a key role in the Spanish Army’s armored vehicle programs and the main development projects driven by the European Commission through the European Defence Fund (EDF), including Marte, Famous I and II and Commands". 

The Indra executive explained that Maestre is here to comprehensively transform how an armored vehicle is operated, and he compared the progress of this implementation with the difference between flying a World War II aircraft, equipped with direct analog controls and numerous indicator devices, and a modern aircraft, endowed with digital architecture controlled via computers. “Maestre automatically coordinates all of the systems, merges the information and presents it to the crew and guarantees degrees of ease and immediacy in the vehicle’s operation that have been unimaginable until now, substantially improving decision-making and reliability and, in turn, leading to greater safety for both the crew and the mission”, he emphasized.